That's not because he was old, it's because he refused to take the time to learn new things and keep current in his field. There is a BIG difference between those two things.
You're too generous. I once tried to use Blender. After a few days of banging my head against the computer I decided that eating glass shards would be a better use of my time--and would be almost as productive.
Letting market forces deal with the bandwidth would be fine if there were any real broadband competition out there. Most people in the U.S. have two broadband choices, DSL through their telco or cable through their cableco. A few (very few) are lucky enough to have a third choice (like Fiber optic through FIOS or similar). With competition being so limited, their is little incentive to build up the system--particularly to rural areas where a user's only broadband option may be satellite (if you can even call that "broadband").
My own situation is a good illustration. I live in suburb of a fairly large city. I have two options, a DSL line (max 3Mbs) or a cable line (max 12Mbps). The telco has had the ability to build out to 6Mbps for years now, but has never done so because they knew that the cableco would ultimately pass them anyway. The cableco built out to 12Mbps but charges ridiculously high rates for it. The cableco also has zero incentive to build anything beyond 12Mbps or lower their prices, because their only competition is limited to 3-6Mbps max. Basically, without some government prompting, or the arrival of something like FIOS (which has been deathly slow in deployment), there is absolutely no reason for any of my providers to do anything but sit on their asses and charge whatever they choose.
Only in a technical sense. Imagine if every local supermarket was forced to rent their stores from Walmart. Do you think Walmart is going to charge them a fair rental price?
My state has been experiencing record cold temps all winter too, not just snow. Of course, knowing you religious types, I'm sure you can explain away that too (true believers always have an answer when something contradicts their religious beliefs).
Global Warming strikes me as having way too many parallels to a religion to accept it at face value. I used to work with a environmentalist who was one of its ministers, in fact. It has its own apocalyptic scenario, its true believers can retroactively adjust their arguments to account for any contradictory data, and it even has its own Pope (Al Gore).
I hope the administration really makes a PR push on nuclear energy. With Obama being a darling of the left and environmental types, his advocacy could go a long way in dispelling some of the hippie anti-nuclear horseshit and hysteria that has put us so far behind Europe in the last several decades. It might also finally get enough public support to break the Yucca Mountain logjam and finally implement a sensible storage solution.
One of the most common arguments that I hear out of net neutrality opponents is that competition will somehow keep most ISP's net neutral without any messy government regulation. But what happens if all the major ISP's start blocking certain sites (like Pirate Bay)? With most people (in the U.S. at least) having at most 1-3 broadband providers to choose from, exactly where are you supposed to you go when all the big ones agree on a blacklist? And how can you open up a competing provider when all the wire and fiber are in the hands of monopolies like AT&T, Time-Warner, etc.? It's not like you can just start up a Mom & Pop broadband provider and start laying hundreds of miles of cable. Even Google will have a hard time competing with the big telco's and cableco's with the relatively minor bit of fiber optic they own.
The Andrew Johnson and, arguably, Ulysses Grant administrations were worse. But in those cases their incompetent was mostly unintentional. The Cheney Administration (let's not kid ourselves about who was really calling the shots) had a much more insidious agenda (though they were certainly incompetent in many respects as well). Chency had dreamed since the Ford administration of re-centralizing much of the Presidential power lost in the wake of Watergate, and he largely succeeded during his administration in resorting that power and gutting laws like of FISA that had decentralized that power. The fact that he also helped out his oil buddies was almost benign compared to some of the stuff he pulled off.
What do you expect to do? Sponsor everyone's emigration from Iran?
No, I would only remind the companies doing business there that the day may come when they have to answer for their actions. Personally, if I was in a position where I had to do stuff like turn in dissidents, I would quickly seek another line of work. Even if you're not worried about the moral implications, the day could easily come when the existing government is overthrown and you could find your neck on the bad end of a noose.
It's not a question of who you trust, it's a question of *how much* you trust them. I don't trust MS with a lot of stuff, including a lot of my personal security. But I wouldn't trust OSS enough to recommend it for a corporate environment either (in most cases). I can't go to my boss and recommend a piece of software that may be buggy, has poor to non-existent support and documentation, has unpredictable updates, and may end up a piece of abandonware. With established companies like MS, Adobe, etc. you at least don't have to worry as much about issues like that. Sometimes it's worth the extra money to pay for the name-brand stuff.
That's a pretty meaningless technical distinction. Differentiating between the country that demands the censorship and the company that actually implements it is like the classic case of the mass murderer who defends himself with "I was only following orders." Google, Yahoo, etc. have used the "We have to follow the laws of the country we're in" defense for a lot of stuff recently. But that's false on many levels. First of all they don't HAVE to do business in that country, they CHOOSE to. Secondly, even if you did, that still doesn't excuse the immorality of the actions. Even an Iranian business that must turn over dissidents for execution is still morally culpable for their role in that system.
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What am I if I was thinking about the shiny robot?
That's not because he was old, it's because he refused to take the time to learn new things and keep current in his field. There is a BIG difference between those two things.
You're too generous. I once tried to use Blender. After a few days of banging my head against the computer I decided that eating glass shards would be a better use of my time--and would be almost as productive.
If that's not sarcasm, you've surely invited the wrath of the GIU gods. On your head be it.
Politicians making big promises and then failing to deliver?!?!? Well, there goes my faith in those guys.
Letting market forces deal with the bandwidth would be fine if there were any real broadband competition out there. Most people in the U.S. have two broadband choices, DSL through their telco or cable through their cableco. A few (very few) are lucky enough to have a third choice (like Fiber optic through FIOS or similar). With competition being so limited, their is little incentive to build up the system--particularly to rural areas where a user's only broadband option may be satellite (if you can even call that "broadband").
My own situation is a good illustration. I live in suburb of a fairly large city. I have two options, a DSL line (max 3Mbs) or a cable line (max 12Mbps). The telco has had the ability to build out to 6Mbps for years now, but has never done so because they knew that the cableco would ultimately pass them anyway. The cableco built out to 12Mbps but charges ridiculously high rates for it. The cableco also has zero incentive to build anything beyond 12Mbps or lower their prices, because their only competition is limited to 3-6Mbps max. Basically, without some government prompting, or the arrival of something like FIOS (which has been deathly slow in deployment), there is absolutely no reason for any of my providers to do anything but sit on their asses and charge whatever they choose.
That would require that the U.S. take the world lead in internet development. It's completely unrealistic to expect something so unprecedented.
Only in a technical sense. Imagine if every local supermarket was forced to rent their stores from Walmart. Do you think Walmart is going to charge them a fair rental price?
My state has been experiencing record cold temps all winter too, not just snow. Of course, knowing you religious types, I'm sure you can explain away that too (true believers always have an answer when something contradicts their religious beliefs).
Again, this parallels religion more than a science, i.e.:
If we pray and disaster doesn't strike, it's because we prayed.
If we don't pray and disaster strikes, it's because we didn't pray.
If we pray and disaster strikes, it's just part of God's plan.
Global Warming strikes me as having way too many parallels to a religion to accept it at face value. I used to work with a environmentalist who was one of its ministers, in fact. It has its own apocalyptic scenario, its true believers can retroactively adjust their arguments to account for any contradictory data, and it even has its own Pope (Al Gore).
No, the rest of the state has it. Your mother just didn't have the heart to tell you she can't afford it.
It should probably be somewhere out in the middle of the desert too, maybe in a place like Nevada.
I hope the administration really makes a PR push on nuclear energy. With Obama being a darling of the left and environmental types, his advocacy could go a long way in dispelling some of the hippie anti-nuclear horseshit and hysteria that has put us so far behind Europe in the last several decades. It might also finally get enough public support to break the Yucca Mountain logjam and finally implement a sensible storage solution.
Of course Android is doing better than the iPhone. It's not like the iPhone had a headstart of several years or anything.
At least in the U.S. we disbarred Jack Thompson. In Australia, they made him Attorney General!
One of the most common arguments that I hear out of net neutrality opponents is that competition will somehow keep most ISP's net neutral without any messy government regulation. But what happens if all the major ISP's start blocking certain sites (like Pirate Bay)? With most people (in the U.S. at least) having at most 1-3 broadband providers to choose from, exactly where are you supposed to you go when all the big ones agree on a blacklist? And how can you open up a competing provider when all the wire and fiber are in the hands of monopolies like AT&T, Time-Warner, etc.? It's not like you can just start up a Mom & Pop broadband provider and start laying hundreds of miles of cable. Even Google will have a hard time competing with the big telco's and cableco's with the relatively minor bit of fiber optic they own.
The Andrew Johnson and, arguably, Ulysses Grant administrations were worse. But in those cases their incompetent was mostly unintentional. The Cheney Administration (let's not kid ourselves about who was really calling the shots) had a much more insidious agenda (though they were certainly incompetent in many respects as well). Chency had dreamed since the Ford administration of re-centralizing much of the Presidential power lost in the wake of Watergate, and he largely succeeded during his administration in resorting that power and gutting laws like of FISA that had decentralized that power. The fact that he also helped out his oil buddies was almost benign compared to some of the stuff he pulled off.
IIRC, Steve Austin fought him several times in the 70's. That's proof enough for me.
No, I would only remind the companies doing business there that the day may come when they have to answer for their actions. Personally, if I was in a position where I had to do stuff like turn in dissidents, I would quickly seek another line of work. Even if you're not worried about the moral implications, the day could easily come when the existing government is overthrown and you could find your neck on the bad end of a noose.
It's not a question of who you trust, it's a question of *how much* you trust them. I don't trust MS with a lot of stuff, including a lot of my personal security. But I wouldn't trust OSS enough to recommend it for a corporate environment either (in most cases). I can't go to my boss and recommend a piece of software that may be buggy, has poor to non-existent support and documentation, has unpredictable updates, and may end up a piece of abandonware. With established companies like MS, Adobe, etc. you at least don't have to worry as much about issues like that. Sometimes it's worth the extra money to pay for the name-brand stuff.
That's a pretty meaningless technical distinction. Differentiating between the country that demands the censorship and the company that actually implements it is like the classic case of the mass murderer who defends himself with "I was only following orders." Google, Yahoo, etc. have used the "We have to follow the laws of the country we're in" defense for a lot of stuff recently. But that's false on many levels. First of all they don't HAVE to do business in that country, they CHOOSE to. Secondly, even if you did, that still doesn't excuse the immorality of the actions. Even an Iranian business that must turn over dissidents for execution is still morally culpable for their role in that system.
Just remember, after you watch it, STOP TOUCHING YOURSELF!
The Geek Council hasn't updated their violation form wording in a while. They've been too distracted the comic book resurgence in recent years.
If he hasn't at least seen "Wargames" we must banish him from the tribe.